Marijuana laws, racially motivated?

It's a Stamp Act! Isn't that unconstitutional or something? Around these parts (New England) some time back we Tared and Feathered people for trying to enforce one of those.

That's interesting, but consider how marijuana was associated with white college students 30-40 years ago. They should've legalized it then, if race were the criterion for these laws.

Then again, considering the difference in penalties for crack and cocaine, there definitely is a bias...

I read somewhere that it had something to do with prejudice against Mexican farm labourers. But then I wouldn't be surprised if it was more that they weren't buying and consuming alcohol and using marijuana instead and outlawing marijuana was about protecting the brewers/distillers interests.

Yep, complaints about Mexican migrant workers and their "weed" started to surface around the 1920's. Anti-Marijuana laws sprung up in states with significant populations of Mexican immigrants. Basically, it was an attempt to control these populations. The situation came to a head during the great depression, and concern about Mexican immigrants taking sparse jobs away from Americans. As Dr. David Musto said in an interview with Frontline for a program about America's war on marijuana, "Then in the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit, these people became a feared surplus in our country. People tried to get them to go back to Mexico. They were thought to be undercutting Americans for jobs, and they were thought to take marijuana, go into town on the weekends, for example, and create mayhem."

Pressure for a national anti-marijuana law came primarily from Southwestern and Western states, areas with significant Mexican populations.

According to Musto, Anslinger didn't want an anti-marijuana law at first because of the burden it would put on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
"Now, how to control something that was in fact a weed, something that had been grown in the United States for hemp since the 18th century was a real problem. And the head of the narcotics bureau, Harry J. Anslinger, really did not want, in his heart, a federal anti- marijuana law. Because he saw it as putting a tremendous burden on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics [FBN]. They got no more money, they got no more agents, and they're supposed to stamp out a weed. He was telling me that once he was driving across a bridge in the upper Potomac, he stopped his car, and he got out, and he says, there it was-- marijuana, as far as you could see it on this river. And he said, 'This, they want me to stamp out.'"

BUSTED america's war on marijuana

Prohibition has always been racially motivated, or at the very least class conscious.
The focus turned to the evil weed after the prohibitionists were unable to ban the firewater the dirty irish and italian catholics imbibed.
Black smoked pot, the orientals had their opium and hispanics the coca plant. Must be an ungodly pastime if all these ruffians are enjoying it, eh!
I wish, just for once, the christian right and their far reaching policies and misguided belief system would learn to lighten up and stop screwing up the world the rest of us want to enjoy.